Lydia (2 page)

Friday, 6th September

A
unt Philips came to spend the day with us, and so today we did not return to Meryton. I had hoped she would take us back with her in her carriage, but she stayed and stayed, and the fact that she talked of nothing but the regiment only made it more excruciating.

“The colonel is a fine man – served in Spain! His face is badly scarred but it hardly matters, he is so noble and manly. The regiment is come from Derbyshire. Derbyshire, sister! I have heard our brother's wife talk very fondly of that county, and indeed the officers are all most agreeable and gentlemanly. They are lodging in town. Some are married, and their wives – delightful creatures! Though it is not the
married
officers who interest us, eh, sister?” She nudged Mamma and looked meaningfully at all of us.

“The lower ranks camp, of course,” Aunt continued. “But they do not interest us either. The encampment is on the other side of town, a little out of the way by the river. The colonel says we shall hardly know they are there, but I do confess . . .”
She leaned in towards Mamma but whispered loud enough for us all to hear, “Soldiers, sister! Remember the Atwood girl?”

“How could I forget?” Mamma gasped, rolling her eyes towards us. “Sister, do not speak of such things!”

“Who was the Atwood girl?” Kitty asked, and after a flurry of “My dears, I couldn't possibly say,” Aunt
did
say, because she always does, and told us the story of poor Annie Atwood, a girl they once knew, who ran off with a soldier and was never spoken of again, not even by her own family.

“How do you
know
her family never spoke of her?” I asked. Aunt said it was common knowledge she never darkened their door again.

“It is a salutary tale, to be sure,” she sighed, and then she and Mamma broke into giggles like a pair of girls.

I tried to ignore them, and thought instead of the camp. I imagine it smells something like the stables, all horses and dung and hay and sweat. There would be wood smoke, too, from the fires, and the smell of cooking, and bustle and shouting and noise. If I were a man, I wouldn't waste my time sitting about on sofas listening to Aunt Philips and Mamma giggle away about the past, and I wouldn't be like Father either, forever in his library, or like Uncle Philips or Maria's father, Sir William Lucas, lounging about indoors getting fat. I would live outside always, and have a splendid horse and gallop from one end of the country to the next, jumping hedges and fording rivers, and I would have a greatcoat with pockets full of useful things like knives and string, which I could wrap around myself at night when I slept under the stars, and I would have a gun across my back to catch the dinner I would roast over a fire, and have adventure after adventure, and one day when I
had grandchildren their eyes would pop clean out of their heads with the excitement of listening to me.

As it is, being a girl, I can barely even ride.

“Lydia, are you quite well?” Mamma's voice brought me back to the drawing room.

“What did you say, Mamma?” I asked.

“You are quite flushed! Move away from the fire, child.”

“Please may I be excused?”

I slipped out before Mamma could reply, and ran all the way to the Waire.

It is really only a small stream, but when I was a little girl I thought it a great river. There is a sort of beach by the bridge, where once when I was eight I tried to swim like the village boys do. I hid in a tree and spied on them for a week to understand how they floated, and one afternoon when they had gone I stripped down to my shift and waded in.

For a few seconds – maybe even a minute – it was marvellous. My toes curled in soft sand, my shift floated about my waist, and my whole body burned with cold. I lay on my back as I had seen the boys do, and water rushed over my head, and the world was full of bubbles, and it was absolutely splendid. Then the current swept me away and I nearly drowned.

A farmhand found me clinging to a rock in the middle of the water and carried me home, and it was all vastly dramatic. Mamma almost fainted at the sight of me, all wet and covered in mud and bleeding a bit, and Father actually smacked me. My sisters couldn't believe what I had done. They tried to make me promise I wouldn't do it again, but I refused. I said nothing in my life had ever been so wonderful, and I never admitted to a single soul how frightened I had been.

I still love the Waire, despite it trying to kill me. I haven't tried to swim again, but I do paddle sometimes, and I always go to it when I feel like I did today. Even though here it is only a stream, Mary says that about fifteen miles away it flows into the Lea, which flows into the Thames, which goes through London and then into the sea, and
that
must be quite something.

Wednesday, 11th September

W
e have a new neighbour. His name is Mr. Bingley, and he is young, single and rich – four or five thousand pounds a year, if my mother is to be believed. He is to rent Netherfield Park and will move in by the end of the month. Mamma is beside herself with the excitement of it.

“What a fine thing for our girls!” she cried, following my father into his library. Kitty and I crouched by the door.

“I suppose she will want him to marry Jane,” Kitty said.

Mary announced that nothing good ever came from listening at doors.

“Papa will say he should be for Lizzy,” I whispered to Kitty. “Seeing as she's his favourite.”

“And then they will argue,” Kitty agreed.

I had to put my hand over her mouth as we pressed our ears to the door, to stifle the sound of her coughing. Sure enough, Mamma and Father's argument was proceeding exactly as we knew it would.

“Lizzy is not a bit better than the others!” my mother
protested. “She is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia.”

“What about
me
?” Kitty glared at the door. “I'm handsome
and
good-tempered!”

I laughed, and jumped out of the way as she tried to kick me.

Mary sniffed.

“I suppose
you
think we are being frivolous,” I said.

She plunged her nose into the book she was carrying.

“All this talk of husbands,” she said. “When you could be improving—”

“Our minds, yes, I know.” I sighed.

“She's coming!” Kitty hissed, and we scurried away across the vestibule.

The library door opened and our mother flounced out, calling for tea to soothe her nerves. She looked at us suspiciously as she passed and we all flew about pretending to be busy.

“You know nothing about him!” Mary hissed when Mamma was gone.

“We know he's rich,” Kitty corrected. “And there is nothing frivolous about that.”

Mary asked, was that all she really cared for in a husband? Kitty said she hoped he would be handsome, too.

“I dare say you would sooner have a rector or a curate than a rich man,” I teased Mary. “And spend your days tending his poultry and dairy, and listening to his sermons, and darning his socks, and be poor as a mouse.”

Mary flushed. “Some of us may choose not to marry,” she said.

“Not marry!” I cried. “What on earth would you do instead?”

“I should hate a poor husband,” Kitty declared. “Jane can have her Mr. Bingley and his four or five thousand a year. My husband will have twice as much, and be so good-looking everyone will faint dead away as soon as they see him.”

“Men like that don't marry girls like you, Kitty,” Mary said.

“Girls like what?” Kitty pouted.

“Girls with no money.”

“They do if they love them!” Kitty cried.

“Love!” Mary scoffed, but Kitty had seized the dress she was supposed to be mending and was dancing with it around the vestibule. “Rich!” she sang. “Handsome! Jealous!”

I laughed again and looked out of the window. The rain had stopped. Jane and Lizzy were walking together outside, doubtless whispering about our new neighbour. I don't know why everything always has to be about
them
, just because they are the oldest. Sometimes you would think my parents only had two daughters instead of five, but I'm sure we are all just as good as they are.

Kitty stopped dancing and threw herself on to the settle.

“What about you, Liddy?” she asked. “What sort of a man will you marry?”

Oh, rich and handsome, to be sure! That is what I was going to say. But the front door was standing open. Outside, Jane and Lizzy were walking towards the stream.

“Well?” Mary asked. “What sort of husband will yours be?”

I thought of the Waire winding lazily towards the sea, and the feeling I had the day the officers came to Meryton, that the world would never be the same. Suddenly rich and handsome
did not seem enough.

“Someone magnificent,” I said, “who will make the rest of you wild with envy, and who will take me a long, long way from here.”

Wednesday, 16th October

L
ast night was the first assembly ball since the regiment came, and Aunt Philips was quite right – it was so much more jolly for their presence!

We met the officer who blushed when we passed him in the street. His name is Captain Carter. He is not as tall as I remembered him, and his hair is more ginger than sandy. His friend is Mr. Denny.
He
seemed
taller
than when first we saw him, and has crooked teeth and bushy eyebrows, but they both cut a fine figure in their dress uniforms, and dance infinitely better than any of our neighbours, who look like farm boys next to them. They have another friend called Pratt, who has the biggest whiskers I have ever seen. I laughed when I saw them and told him whiskers were quite out of fashion, and he said, “Who cares, when I wear them with such
panache
?”

I am not entirely sure what
panache
is, but I like it.

I danced every dance.
Every single one
. My slippers are quite torn to shreds.

All the talk at home today is of Mr. Bingley, who came to
the ball with his two sisters, one of their husbands, and a rich gentleman called Mr. Darcy, who is very tall, with flashing dark eyes and an expensive-looking coat. He didn't dance once but looked like he might die of boredom unless someone put him out of his misery and shot him first. The Bingley sisters (the Conceited Miss Caroline and the Hateful Mrs. Hurst) were dressed all in feathers and fans and held their noses so high in the air it was a wonder they didn't trip over their own silk petticoats. The husband was fat and had hair growing out of his ears. They are all ghastly, except for Mr. Bingley, who as well as being pleasingly rich is very beautiful, in a soft, brown-eyed sort of way, and has made himself exceedingly popular by promising to give a ball. He danced with Jane
twice
, which in Mamma's eyes makes them as good as married.

“He never paid such a compliment to any other lady in the room,” Mamma informed Charlotte and Maria Lucas when they came to visit this afternoon.

“She still didn't dance as much as I did,” I informed them.

Kitty giggled. Lizzy told us to be quiet. Mary rolled her eyes.

“Mr. Robinson asked whom he thought the prettiest woman in the room,” Charlotte told us. “And he replied, the eldest Miss Bennet beyond a doubt, there cannot be two opinions on that point . . .”

Mamma sighed happily.

“Every single dance,” I said, but now they were all taken up with Lizzy, and with how she had overheard Mr. Darcy refuse to dance with her even when Mr. Bingley pressed him to, and when Mr. Bingley said he thought Lizzy was pretty Mr. Darcy said she was only
tolerable
, which I think is hilarious because usually everyone thinks Lizzy is perfect, but Mamma is furious
about, probably because he is richer than any person we have ever known and would be even more of a catch than Bingley, although she won't admit it. Well, let them talk! I danced more last night than any of them, and dancing is my favourite thing in the world.